ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,320,738, issued on June 3, was assigned to HUAZHONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Hubei, China).

"Fire smoke detection method and fire smoke detector based on particle shape characteristics" was invented by Ming Zhu (Hubei, China), Mengxue Lin (Hubei, China), Lei Chen (Hubei, China), Renshan Zhang (Hubei, China) and Maosen Wang (Hubei, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A fire smoke-detection method and detector based on particle shape characteristics for detecting particles in an optical dark chamber. An optical path angle between one blue light and one infrared light and a photoelectric conversion module is an acute angle, whi...